Fishbl

Prototype link (Please submit a link to a playable prototype, not a link to your design file) (https://www.figma.com/proto/UiqEH5vT8q4ilNKexKsC9d/Rice-2025-Team-Whole-Milk?page-id=7%3A7&node-id=100-16955&viewport=660%2C-1010%2C0.18&t=SxbY6Pt9Xkdv6hM3-1&scaling=scale-down&content-scaling=fixed&starting-point-node-id=100%3A16955)
Describe your project (max 150 words)

We're speeding towards a dangerous world where the rise of AI and addiction encouraging technology fosters a generation deprived of fundamental human communication and connection. The urge to be around other people, be outside, and stay in contact offline is a human need that is getting smothered.

We asked ourselves, “how can we encourage people to disconnect from screens, prioritize real-life experiences, and strengthen their relationships- preserving our innate human need for connection and belonging?”

Fishbl is an app designed to get people off their screens and into real-life connections through fun, competitive challenges. Inspired by BINGO, each square comes with a task- like grabbing coffee with a friend or snapping a funny-looking dog.

The catch? You have 24 hours to complete each task while competing with friends or players worldwide before the BINGO board resets. The goal: fill your board, score bingos, and strengthen relationships through real-world experiences.

Describe your research process and findings. If you conducted any surveys or interviews, please include the survey form and/or interview questions here. If you conducted secondary research by pulling from online sources, please include a link to your sources. (Max 500 words)

Following the double diamond design framework, we conducted primary and secondary research through analyzing studies/research papers, getting insights from online forums, competitive analysis, understanding pain points through google form surveys, A/B testing, ideation sessions. From our research we’re able to collect quantitative and qualitative data, which led to our data driven design decisions. Before diving into designing, we prioritized understanding the problem by identifying key threats posed by AI to humanity, specifically its impact on remaining human. Through secondary research of studies and research papers, we discovered that AI's role in facilitating communication can lead to a reduction in face-to-face interactions (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7605294/), restriction of human autonomy and social behavior (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/730709), and erosion of deep, meaningful relationships, all contributing to a broader issue: the diminishing sense of belonging and connection. After identifying this fundamental challenge, we discovered our primary audience, Gen Z: the demographic most impacted by the lack of human connection in the AI driven world.

For our demographic, we received 50 survey responses about their interaction behaviors with friends and social media usage. We also learned about their motivations for using social media to stay connected and what strategies that they use. Among the numerous pain points that we encountered, we identified common trends using affinity mapping. Trends were: need motivation to participate, struggle with scheduling social interactions, and the emotional value of social apps is more important than competition. While we originally used this to mark out pain points, we also noticed what users prioritize and want. We discovered that even just getting users to join a new app could be a challenge unless we incentivize them to join. However, our original idea for incentivizing was competition among friends, but the majority of users found more joy in documenting memories (94.8%) , sharing personal content (77%), and entertainment (92.3%). These findings directly changed the direction of our app. We conducted interviews in order to see what can keep users to use and share the app with their friends.

We also created competitive analysis charts with competitors such as BeReal and Snapchat, both of which are ephemeral media based apps. We compiled a list of features from interviews, surveys, and what is currently on the market now, then ranked them based on what has high impact and simple implementation. With a finalized list of features, we started to develop user flows to account for all the different directions a new user could encounter.

So we started with wireframing, putting emphasis on making sure our wireframes were a strong foundation that could lead to a swift transition into high fidelity. So we conducted A/B testing on a few core features and pages such as home and profile to ensure user satisfaction and ease of use. Our goal is to encourage more social interactions and maintain connections through shared activities regardless of distance.

Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions? (Max 500 words)

We came into this project making many assumptions about the users and what they want. But we were in for a surprise once we woke up to 50 responses from our user survey. Regarding users and how they use social media, some responses were to be expected such as many people keep in touch by liking, commenting, and swiping up on their content. Yet we underestimated this very obvious observation, and did not account for it as much. So in our designs, we made sure to add a commenting and like feature that originally was not going to be implemented. But due to the grand majority of users mentioning these features, we made sure to highlight them as an additional way for users to stay connected with each other, especially since the surveys exposed that a large reason for drifting apart is distance. This can counteract it in a fun and gamified way. While people may feel awkward or avoidant of texting/calling, they may be willing to try a new way to stay connected.

For our second important design decision, we had to readjust our primary belief, we assumed that people would play and use this app because of its competitive nature and spirit between friends. But we found out from our survey and live interviews that most user’s main goal was to document memories, share personal content, and entertainment. So while we were able to maintain the same idea, we had to make adjustments to features such as cutting out badges since users were not very motivated or enthusiastic about them and adding features such as likes and comments. While we understand the trend that users had in our survey responses, we could not find out the “why” until we started calling people for interviews to determine what features that users would actually like and want to use in their friend groups. Examples that we were able to deep dive was about how much time should be allocated to challenges and what type of topics should be presented through the usage of AI. While yes it can seem contradictory to utilize it, it is still a strong tool that we can use to retain our human need of connecting. After we understood what features were approved by users, we had another road block to consider. Many social apps fail since users do not want to use or download them. From our competitive analysis, we looked over common apps that users use to keep up with friends through images and or games. Our strongest competitors were BeReal and Snapchat, both featured ephemeral media which not only encourages more daily interaction but also spontaneity. We designed for this since higher usage of this app will also increase how much users interact with each other and stay in touch.